tempt to
direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
the others.

It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated,
almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had
vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The
certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always
understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized
into fact.

"She gets everything, of course--I don't see what we're here for," Mrs.
Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
latter's deprecating murmur--"Julia was always a just woman"--might have
been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.

"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's
preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel
missing--I went over them with her the very day----"

Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly
erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
through the preamble of the will.

"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
grown--he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved ha